Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Blog

            My initial reaction to seeing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer in bookstores was that it was too soon.  I am aware as to how unoriginal this notion is, but I was guilty of it.  Overall, I am against exploiting people, events, or anything else with some social value, and it made me sick when gold coins, quarters, special edition twin tower novelty bills; FDNY shirts, hats, toy fire trucks; and documentaries galore were created to honor the memory of the World Trade Center, and the freedom of commerce that it stood for as an attempt to make a profit off of a national tragedy that reverberated around the world.   Although many individuals found purchasing these items a coping mechanism, the sale of them began to demonstrate a sense of greed that I did not realize was possible—profits were made off of peoples’ grief. 

            However, after reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I came to realize that the novel might not be as deplorable as my cynicism made it out to be.  Today in class, we discussed what the novel is about.  As a relatively recent addition to the works of twenty first century American literature, the novel serves as an excellent commentary and reminder of what is and should be important to us.  The novel takes a subject that society has told us not to talk about, a topic that will forever be too soon to talk about, and it molds a beautiful message out of that.  No, we do not step back often enough and tell each other how much we love each other and how much we mean to one another, and we think exactly as Oskar thinks as he expresses his efforts to his mother, “‘I promise I’m going to be better soon… I’ll be happy and normal… I tried incredibly hard.  I don’t know how I could have tried harder.” (Foer, 323).  What Foer attempts to express to his reader is that we should stop trying so hard to be happy and to portray whatever “normal” is, maybe it is time that we let life happen.  After all, there is no way to predict who will enter and leave our lives, but we can choose to embrace them for who they are, just as Oskar did.